There was a time a long time ago when I was looking at colleges and my father wanted me to consider at least one school in the City University of New York (CUNY) system. He thought it would make sense in case I didn’t want to go away and would serve as a fallback if things away from home didn’t work out.
The school we decided on was Baruch College in Manhattan. He was fascinated by Bernard Baruch, the American financier and statesman who became a close advisor to president’s and the school that took his name and the finance programs they had established. I applied and got into Baruch but never visited. I did, however, know Baruch well because of sports…NBA teams would practice there or at John Jay on the West Side when they could not get court time at Madison Square Garden.
That was until the past few weeks, when media far and wide descended on the school on the Upper East Side to talk…volleyball, specifically men’s volleyball. Now its not like its because of the amazing athletic success such as we saw with the yeshiva men’s basketball team the last few years, where the Maccabees became a national story and one of New York’s most fun hoops stories in years.
It was because of the person who never played there but said he did…Congressman (for now) George Santos. As the Santos saga continued to play out, everyone from the Washington Post to the New York Times found themselves at Baruch home games, talking about the team, the alumni, the coach and the students about their most famous alum who never was.
So how did Baruch handle it? The way any scrappy program should when having spotlights thrust upon them…in a fun and welcoming way. Bring on the questions, maybe create and sell santos bootleg tee shirts or jerseys, find a George and a Santos who were on the team, make it a cause celebre, but don’t push the cameras and the attention away.
Give these Division III athletes a chance to get some recognition for their work as student-athletes off the buzz over a disgraced punching bag of a politician whose story keeps spiraling down while the focus can be grabbed, and who knows where it will lead down the line? Maybe there is a chance meeting with an athletic official that can lead to a career opportunity, maybe a hiring manager sees how Baruch officials embraced the absurdity and handled it well, maybe someone is applying for a job and Baruch, because of their volleyball spotlight, becomes a talking point where it was not before.
That’s what storytelling and taking advantage of a window of exposure can and should do when it is taken well, and it’s how sometimes, the spin can work. It’s not forced, its honest its authentic and it makes for great copy.
Well played Baruch, great seeing a positive and fun story come from the absurd ramblings of a phony, and hope the scoring for the team and the CUNY school continues.
